🔗 Share this article

Over the course of nearly four hundred years, the transatlantic slave trade resulted in 12.5 million Africans forcibly taken from their homelands to the Americas. A staggering 1.8 million of those individuals died during the voyage, enduring scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, squalor, and disease. Some took their own lives by leaping overboard, while still more were callously thrown into the sea.

Two Interwoven Narratives

In The Zorg, author Siddharth Kara weaves together two interconnected narratives. The first chronicles a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship—the systematic drowning of 132 captive individuals by its British crew. The second story examines how this atrocity came to influence the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, thanks largely by the relentless efforts of a dazzling array of committed campaigners. Among them was Olaudah Equiano, who authored one of the rare first-person accounts of the Middle Passage, describing it as “a scene of horror almost inconceivable”.

The Roots in Liverpool

The account begins in Liverpool, a port city that at the peak of its economic power was responsible for 40% of Europe's slave trafficking. Investing in slavery was a highly profitable venture for everyone from the elites to the common people. One such investor, William Gregson, saved up his wages from his trade, ploughed them into the slave trade, and eventually became a wealthy burgher and later mayor. Gregson financed the slave ship The William, which set sail from Liverpool for West Africa in October 1780 under Captain Richard Hanley. Its cargo was loaded with trade goods like tobacco, firearms, knives, and various “India goods” such as chintz and cowrie shells—the shells being a standard rate in the acquisition of enslaved people.

A Ship Seized

Concurrently, a Dutch slave vessel named the Zorg (later anglicized by the British as the Zong) had departed the Netherlands. With Britain at war with the Dutch in late 1780, the Royal Navy granted British ships authority to capture Dutch property at sea—a de facto sanctioning of piracy. The Zorg was soon taken by a British captain and held off the Gold Coast. Meanwhile, Captain Hanley, on a slaving expedition, took aboard a fleeing British governor named Robert Stubbs, who had been removed for corruption.

The Nightmare Passage

When Hanley arrived at Cape Coast Castle—a stronghold with a vast holding cell beneath it—he took command of the captured Zorg. He proceeded to severely overcrowd it with enslaved people, put a dozen of his own crew on board, and made Luke Collingwood, a ship's surgeon of questionable nautical skill, its captain. In August 1781, the Zorg left Accra carrying 442 captives, 17 crew members, and one notorious passenger: the former governor, Robert Stubbs.

Kara excels in using historical documents to bring to life the collective nightmare of being transported on a slave ship.

The Zorg's journey was plagued with disaster. "The flux" ravaged the vessel, and then scurvy. The captain fell ill, lost his senses, and handed command over to Stubbs. Thus, “a ship full of decay and death was being commanded by a passenger.” Kara effectively employs period testimonies to paint a picture of the sheer horror. The graphic testimony of Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who became an activist, details how the enslaved people's skin was often worn down to the bone from lying on bare wood, their flesh caught between the planks.

A Calculated Atrocity

By late November 1781, the Zorg was still far from Jamaica and critically short on water. The crew resolved to throw overboard a number of the enslaved Africans, who had already suffered through months of obscene conditions below deck. This unspeakable act was not motivated by preserving life—the Africans had pleaded to be allowed to live, even without water rations—but by cold economic greed. Maritime insurance policies did not cover deaths from natural causes, but they would pay for cargo discarded out of “necessity” for the ship's safety. Over a period of days, the crew drowned “those Africans who would be worth less at auction”—the infirm, the sick, along with women and children, among them a baby born during the voyage.

The Courtroom Battle

Back in Liverpool, investor William Gregson was unhappy about the profit on his investment. He submitted an insurance claim for £30 per drowned captive—a considerable sum in today's money. The insurers declined to pay. In March 1783, Gregson sued and was awarded a trial by jury, with his lawyers claiming that throwing the enslaved people overboard had been “necessary.”

The Spark for Abolition

According to Kara, “there is a direct line of causality between the public exposure of the Zorg murders and the first movement to abolish slavery in England.” Merely twelve days after the trial, an published essay appeared in a prominent English newspaper. The author, who claimed to have been present the court proceedings, argued compellingly against slavery, citing the Zorg case as a key illustration of its inherent evil. Olaudah Equiano read the letter and brought it to the activist Granville Sharp, who filed a motion for a new trial. At the following hearing, the events on the Zorg were reviewed in meticulous detail, exactly what the abolitionists had wanted.

A Sustained Campaign

In the spring of 1787, the initial group of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade convened. Over the following years, they petitioned, made speeches, lobbied tirelessly, and gathered evidence on the realities of the slave trade. “Their efforts,” Kara writes, “would lay a blueprint for the pursuit of social justice.” After years of setbacks, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was finally passed in 1807.

A Lasting Legacy

The debate over who or what should be credited for abolition is contentious. The Zorg's influence, however, is powerfully evident in J.M.W. Turner's famous painting, The Slave Ship, which was inspired by the events of 1781. While slavery has been near-universal in human history, its abolition following a sustained public movement was unprecedented, serving as an testament to the power of moral courage, the pen, and unwavering determination.

The Author's Approach

Unlike his other work—such as the acclaimed Cobalt Red—Kara has had to address certain lacunae in the available documentation. Consequently, imaginative flourishes contrast with rigorously researched accounts, giving the book a somewhat hybrid feel. Part thriller and part serious nonfiction, The Zorg ultimately succeeds in shedding light on one of history's darkest chapters, using compelling prose and documented fact to assemble a account that stays with the reader well after the final page.